China Guide
The Northwest
Golmud
Nearly 3000m up on the Tibetan plateau, GOLMUD is an incredibly isolated city, even by the standards of northwest China. An airport provides a link to Xining, but otherwise it lies at least fourteen hours away overland from the nearest sizeable population centre in Lhasa. For travellers, the city is really only of interest as a transit point between Xining in the east, Dunhuang in the north and Lhasa in the south – Golmud used to be the only place in China where foreigners could officially cross by land to Tibet, but since the completion of the Lhasa rail link only a handful of travellers go by road to the plateau.